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Shit, there&039;s someone in the road up ahead I crouch down behind a low stone wall in the front yard of one of the houses and watch Don&039;t think he&039;s seen ed, I can tell by the way he moves, from his slow, cautious move like this? Stay calm and consider the options, I tell myself He&039;s alone, and if he is one of them, I&039;ll just kill hi, becauselike a pig I need to face this fucker head-on, whoever and whatever he is I try to focus on the euphoria I know I&039;ll feel when I end his rab my axe, then stand up and run at him When he sees me he immediately reaches for his belt, and I curse un and fire-but he doesn&039;t He backs away, running fro into a handheld radio Now I&039;ed, and I know I can&039;t let hi with a frantic speed that I can&039;t le for o Have to kill him
He turns a blind corner I follow, then stop dead indown the road ahead toward ainst one, and I&039;o out fighting or? The bike rider lifts what looks like a riot baton and accelerates, andcoward I turn and run, not even bothering to attack, the screa in h the open door of the nearest house and slam itshut behind me That should slow the bastards down Rather than risk heading upstairs in this ruin I instead stay down, running through a ransacked living roos of the corpse of a wo like she&039;s praying The kitchen of the house is filled with rubble There&039;s a gaping hole where aused to be I scraap, landing in a concrete yard onto shout out, and breathe through the pain In the briefsound of the motorbike as it fades and swirls and seeed enter the front of the house, and I force ain I run down a narrow path in thetoward a tall brick wall at the back of the garden There&039;s a half-empty water barrel in the corner I use it to climb up onto the top of the wall, then kick it over to stop anyone fro in space in the es, a row of three on either side I can either hide here and wait to be found orback over the wall there&039;s only one way out I sprint forward but then stop when the bastard on the bike appears fro the bike around so that it blocks the road I et past, but I&039;ve only taken a few steps farther when I hear hiain I look back over my shoulder as he rears up, riot baton held ready I try to change direction again, try to wrong-foot hi to keep upright and keep ainst the back of ony
More of theed faces hidden by motorcycle helmets, face masks, visors, and scarves I try to stand up, but one of theround Another one holdsThere are too many of the do it! Kill et it over with"
Yet another one appears, loo over me I can see this one&039;s face He looks me up and down, then pulls the plastic stopper off the tip of a hypodermic needle with his teeth and spits it out I try to archto stop the fucker fro the needle hard into my chest
iii
WITHIN WEEKS THE MECHANISM for the ongoing distribution of food and un to falter and fail In retrospect it had see, but, as what had originally been envisaged as a short-tered into its fourth ht, the situation continued to rapidly deteriorate
The initial ground rules and hastily cobbled-together official procedures had been simple Under military control, all resources were to be coordinated via the City Arena-a vast, cavernous, ten-thousand-seat concert venue Its huge, soccer-field-sized concrete floor had been cleared, and all rations, supplies, eency aid, and "collected" foodstuffs were held there under aruard Trucks full of provisions were shipped out to ten noe camp on a daily basis-a movie complex, the town hall, two sports centers, and various other sis From these centers food was distributed to the city&039;s population, who carried ration books with their identification papers
By the beginning of the second erously low levels, the authorities having severely underesti rations and the duration of their enforced incarceration Similarly, they&039;d overestimated their ability to source and replenish food stocks Officially acquired (looted) food continued to enter the city on a daily basis as a result of frequent h More i produced No crops were being grown and harvested, no factories were operating, every transportation and distribution systeh the second month, supplies had fallen to such a low level that the daily restocking of the ten distribution centers was reduced to every other day By the beginning of the thirded on the streets, and for a short while it thrived and flourished Also in month two, a militia faction known colloquially as "the Milkmen" because of the herd of stolen cows they kept penned in on the heavily guarded field of a local soccer team, assumed control of two of the distribution centers The irony of s in s and weapons was not lost on either the military, who tolerated their activities (it took some of the pressure off them), or the poor bastards forced to trade with them Business boomed temporarily until the basic econoer be applied Food, water, and medicines became both the commodities and the currency The demand was inexhaustible, the supply nonexistent Trade stopped Theonly to attack and raid other distribution centers to continue to feed and water theer source enough food and water for their own needs, infighting took hold, and their previously untouchable operations imploded
As the end of month three approached, the City Arena was all but e those previously run by thesites, the Arena was now being run by the military, purely for the benefit of the military One of the distribution centers housed in an old warehouse continued to be ooders ere stupid enough to still believe in helping other people and who dutifully handed out al crowds continuing to line up outside the building twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week Truth was, the only reason they were still in business was because they drip-fed provisions, literally a mouthful at a tiees both protected the distribution center from the threat of militia attack and isolated it from the military authorities and supply routes
Thisdistribution center-housed in a long-e-collapsed The food supplies had finally run dry, and the news predictably caused a riot Thethe center fro the site down and ordering the execution of the three hundred or so rioting civilians trapped inside The public had to be controlled, whatever the cost Disorder like that couldn&039;t be allowed to spread The implications were unthinkable
Three-quarters of an hour ago, Mark had left the cra from his final shift as a volunteer Kate had pleaded with hio, but what choice had he had? He had a duty to provide for her and his unborn child, not to mention the other faly i the streets was a bizarre and frankly terrifying experience, and he quickly realized howwith theoutside the exclusion zone with the army, surrounded by Haters, felt safer than this He desperately tried to keep hiround whenever he passed anyone else or looking over the heads of the crowds he walked through He didn&039;t knohere he was going or what he was hoping to achieve, but he had to keep trying He couldn&039;t just sit there with the rest of the, cold, and frightened, and he begrudgingly felt responsible for all of theeneral direction of the factory building where he, Kate, and the others had collected their rations in the past He walked via Leftbank Place, an area of waste ground that had been planned for redevelopled to see through the never-endingit lookelse The reether under polyethylene sheets, desperately clinging to their last few belongings and each other For a while it rateful for the relative comfort and security of the hotel room where he and the others had been billeted
It was obvious as soon as he got near the distribution center that it had closed down Where he&039;d expected to find uneasy, virtually silent lines of people he no only an empty space Any space was at a pre the site was a bad sign in itself He&039;d already decided to turn around and head back to the hotel before he saw bodies being dragged away A drifting plue, boxlike building He knew that was the smoke from a funeral pyre-a typical military cleanup operation They burned all dead bodies now to stop, or rather slow, the spread of disease
He changed direction gradually, so self-conscious and afraid of everyone else that he didn&039;t dare make any sudden alterations to his route, paranoid that people atching him He found hi where he used to work-and he allowed himself to look up just for a moment and remember Up there, on the seventh floor, here he&039;d spent endless hours before all of this had happened Up there, alongside around one hundred and fifty co-workers, all sitting in front of identical co toward identical targets, he&039;d sold insurance and dealt with people&039;s clai to smile, when a burst pipe or a broken as considered an eency It all seemed so trivial and unimportant now, but it had mattered then Not just to hiled with the iven anything to return to the boredom and routine of his former life now He stopped by a telephone booth to look a little longer and tried not to look suspicious, avoidingon the floor inside it, his back pressed against the door to prevent anyone else fro in Mark counted up to floor seven of the office building, then worked his way along to thenearest to where he used to sit There were people living up there now Even froether, desperate for space Around the base of the building, in a loalled, rectangular area that had once been an exclusive parking lot reserved for coers, was an enormous pile of redundant computer equipment-hundreds of unneeded screens, keyboards, and tower units thrown out as the floors above had been emptied to make room
Mark looked down at the ain He hadn&039;t lass with his knuckles, but theslowly, he shook the door Still no reaction Was he dead? Whatever it was that rong with hi tucked inside his filthy raincoat It had to be food Other than weapons and drugs, food was the only thing worth hiding now He kicked the glass again, this ti inwardly as a couple of other people either turned around or glanced up before reain
The appearance of a s the wall around the base of his old work building distracted him The poor kid looked hopelessly lost and exhausted, all life and energy drained out of hi about this crisis that even the kids were affected to such an extent He&039;d seen fil resiliently around the ruins of their hoe of kids laughing and running through disease-ridden subcontinent slums, but this this was different Even the most innocent and naiveThe boy shouldn&039;t have been on his own Who was he with? Was he lost? Abandoned? Orphaned? He&039;d adopted the saaze as everyone else, trying to separate himself from the rest of the world but unable to escape its close confines Mark had no way of knowing if this kid was okay or if he was sick or He forced himself to stop He had to look away and block him out He couldn&039;t afford to care
This ued with Kate Neither of them had , weeks of pent-up frustrations ly claustrophobic in the hotel roo her insane
"What as change, this is all we&039;ve got There are no hospitals or clinics or-"
"So what happens when the baby comes?"
"We deal with it"
"How?"
"I don&039;t knoe get some towels and water like they said and-"
"What towels? Where&039;s the water going to come from? Christ, Mark, I won&039;t even be able to wash the kid We don&039;t have enough water to drink, let alone-"
"Calm down, Katie You&039;re just-"
"Cal terrified, and you&039;re expecting ive birth to our baby on the floor of a hotel room in front of my parents"
"It&039;s e in another four et"
"Now you&039;re just being stupid"
"I&039;m scared"
"We&039;re all scared"
"I&039;ive birth every year, don&039;t they? And they used to e before hospitals and-"
"It&039;s not that-"
"What, then?"
"I&039;ht be What if it&039;s not like us? What if it&039;s one of them and it?"
"Don&039;t be stupid I&039;m normal and you&039;re normal Our baby will be normal, too"
"But what if it isn&039;t? You don&039;t know that for sure, do you? No one knoe&039;re like we are and why they&039;re different"
She was right, of course, but he kept on trying to persuade her that everything would be okay, doing his best to keep up the bullshit and pretense because it was all he could do
A sudden noise nearby diverted Mark&039;s attention back to the present There was a disturbance deep in a crowd of people on the other side of the road He couldn&039;t clearly see as happening It looked like a fight-someone had probably cracked under the strain of the impossible situation that they, and everyone else, found the-suppressed eees nearby Some ran So Others forgot where they were and all that they&039;d been through and responded with the ht
Mark didn&039;t give a dae of the situation and the distraction it caused, he shoved the door of the phone booth hard When the lifeless round still didn&039;t react, he pushed the door again until there was a wide enough gap for hirocery bag, shoved it inside his coat, and walked back toward the hotel